Clarissa's Blog

4 responses to “The Anti-miscegenation Ad”

1. 

   cliff arroyo

   October 23, 2026

   “will never be part of your family”

   My take since I tend to undertand these things in more… metaphorical ways is a bit different (the relevant part is the last paragraph).

   https://cliffarroyo.wordpress.com/2026/10/22/when-irish-grans-are-hugging/

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   1. 

      Clarissa

      October 23, 2026

      That’s a great reading. It reminded me of one of the closing scenes of the movie La Bola Negra I recently watched in Spain. The main character brings a letter to the descendants of the man whom his grandfather killed during the Spanish Civil War. At first, he tries to call them on the phone and arrange a meeting, but they keep hanging up on him, so he goes in person. A black, clearly African teenage girl opens the door, and he gives her the letter. It’s a very brief scene, but it carries a profound meaning within the story narrated in the movie. Spaniards are still dealing with the legacy of the Civil War. They still carry all of its traumas and are trying to come to terms with it. But the young generation has been remade by mass migration. It consists of many people who don’t know or care about the Spanish Civil War because they have their own wars that are meaningful to them in their past. Or present. A generation from now, will there even be enough people in Spain who will care about Spain’s history? The scene lasts maybe 2 seconds, but it carries the strongest punch of the whole movie. I don’t for a moment believe that the makers of the film intended to give the ending this tragic spin. But anybody who is not completely terrified of the subject is bound to think that the only condition under which the Civil War, gay rights, familial histories, and the fate of Federico García Lorca and his poetry will remain relevant is if Spain (inhabited by the descendants of the people who lived through these events) continues. The only descendant of the gay grandfather in the movie is clearly uninterested in continuing the family line. The family will be replaced by Africans, Romanians, Ukrainians, whoever, and this whole history will fade into utter insignificance. Is that a good thing? If it is, then what is the point of the movie? Why did it need to get made? The ending of the film is realistic, but its very realism makes the point that the movie is a waste of time.

      And it’s exactly the same point that you so correctly observed in the Irish ad. It’s probably utterly unintended on a conscious level, but what we allow our consciousness to conclude is not necessarily everything we observe and worry about. The Spaniard in the movie and the white child in the Irish ad care about the succession of generations in their family and nation. Foreigners do not care about other people’s history, and why should they? They have their own, after all. As Freud said, whatever you repress will always stage a return, no matter how hard you work to repress it. We’re not doing ourselves any favors by avoiding this conversation.

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      1. 

         cliff arroyo

         October 23, 2026

         “Spaniards are still dealing with the legacy of the Civil War”

         God… I wish they’d effin’ get over it…. Eastern Europeans had 10 times the crap to deal with that they do and they still faint and get the vapors at the very thought of the civil war…

         Didn’t they undergo a couple of decades intended to convince them that the reconquista was a horrible racist act?

         Is it generally known that a lot of the stuff written about how awesome moorish rule in Spain was is probably… caca de toros and not really supported by… reality?

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         1. 

            Clarissa

            October 24, 2026

            Every Spanish government since the mid-1980s has contributed to fostering the obsession with the Civil War as a way of distracting from the very serious problems with the economy. The higher unemployment gets, the more actively the so-called memory wars are being fought in Spain.

            That’s why I flipped the lid when I saw an effort to promote the concept of historical memory that is so beloved by Spanish politicians in Ukraine. I kept saying, “People, what are you doing? You are not nearly as wealthy and bored as the Spaniards. You can’t play these games. Spaniards can’t afford to play these games either, but it’s impossible to get them to understand that.”

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